As students head back to school, we thought this was a perfect time to update you on education news in Arkansas.

• The Arkansas Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (AR-GLR) is launching an initiative to promote school attendance this month as kids head back to school. Schools will have banners, posters, and other materials to help parents and kids understand how important attendance is for learning. From AR-GLR:

August is Attendance Awareness Month in Arkansas!

With school starting next week, it is critical that schools, families and businesses come together to spread the word about the value of good attendance. Students cannot afford to lose time on task, especially as they learn to read in the early grades. In Arkansas, more than one in 10 kindergartners and first graders are chronically absent, meaning they miss 10 percent or more of the school year–about 18 days.

• The Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation are joining forces to facilitate a strategic plan for education in Arkansas. The plan will be reviewed by the State Board of Education today. The Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) has shouldered increasing responsibility for supporting, and in some cases taking over, struggling schools throughout the state. The plan will serve as a broader structure for decision-making and policy development.
• The State Board of Education and ADE are working on developing supports for schools and parents to improve parent engagement. A website and a how-to brochure, as well as other strategies, are under development.
• Last month the State Board of Education heard a report on Arkansas School Discipline resulting from Act 1329 of 2013. The effort to develop and pass that legislation was headed by AACF. Almost three times as many non-white students (10.2 percent) received out-of-school suspension as did white students (just 3.6 percent). It leads one to ask why non-white students are suspended at such a disproportionate rate. The report was prepared by the Office of Education Policy at the University of Arkansas.
• Coming this fall are legislative Interim Studies on AR-GLR and Pre-K, currently scheduled for October and November respectively. The Arkansas Opportunity to Learn Campaign will host an AR-OTL Summit later this fall on policy issues related to low-income students.
• And last but arguably most importantly, legislative budget hearings begin in October. We will keep you posted on schedules and locations as we know more.